Intelligence agency of Italy

Italian intelligence agencies have been reorganized many times since the 1946 birth of the Italian Republic in an attempt to increase their effectiveness and bring them more fully under civilian control.

In 1925 born the SIM (Servizio Informazioni Militari). In 1946 the SIFAR and in 1966 the SID (Servizio Informazioni Difesa). It was always military intelligence agencies.

A scandal rocked Italy and its intelligence agencies in 1977, after the arrest in 1974 of a former chief of Servizio Informazioni Difesa (SID), General Vito Miceli, for "conspiracy against the state" following the attempted Golpe Borghese (Borghese Coup). Legislative Act n.801 of 24/10/1977 attempted to reorganize intelligence agencies under civilian control. This re-organization mainly consisted of:

Another scandal succeeded to Prime minister Giulio Andreotti's public revelation, on 24 October 1990, of the existence of Gladio, a stay-behind anti-Communist network supported by NATO which was accused by the Left of having engaged in the "strategy of tension" during the Years of Lead.

In the 2000s, the SISMI became again the target of national controversy, leading to the resignation of its chief, Nicolò Pollari, in November 2006, after his indictment in the Imam Rapito affair, which concerned the "extraordinary rendition" and kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (aka Abu Omar) in Milan in 2003. As part of the judiciary investigation on the abduction of Abu Omar, a SISMI-run black operation targeting center-left politician Romano Prodi and a vast domestic surveillance program, involving the Telecom, was uncovered. The planting of disinformation through paid informants in the Italian press as well as misleading of justice has also been underlined.

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Wikipedia